First off, download Moose and unzip it into an empty folder.
Moose uses the Microsoft .NET Version 2.0 Framework. If you dont have this installed, you can get it via Windows Update, or directly here.
Assuming that's all working, you should be able to start/run/execute Moose.exe.
Unless you've set things up previously, an empty Now Playing window should now appear.
Next, you'll need to configure Moose...
To setup Moose for the first time, select the Tools->Preferences... menu option in the main window. A dialog similar to the following will appear:
IP Address - This should contain the IP address of the Slimserver machine, or 127.0.0.1 (localhost) if it's the same machine as Moose.
CLI Port - Set this to the port number that Slimserver's CLI operates on - usually 9090.
Username / Password - If you have security turned on in slimserver, set these to the same username and password you'd use in your web browser to accessing the Web UI.
Web Server Port - Set this to the port which Slimserver uses to serve webpages - usually 9000.
Moo file - This is used by the library window. Rather than rely on Slimserver's database, Moose maintains its own small super-fast database of music file information. The database is stored in the specified '.moo' file.
To populate the local database, Moose needs to scan your music collection somehow. Currently there are 2 ways of doing this: Scanning the folders directly, or Scanning SlimServer's database. Scanning SlimServer's database is definitely the preferred method as it allows access to tags and IDs, but may require some simple extra stages.
The radio buttons in the library data source group-box tell Moose how to scan
Folders
Ideally, this should always point to the root location of your music files, despite the scanning method you use. Usually the entry is a windows UNC network share - see Shortcuts and Network Shares below.
The Folders entry is mainly used for folder scanning, but also the copy, tagger and open folder functions use it. Moose will work and be useful without it being set, but obviously these features will have problems.
To use folder scanning, Moose assumes your music set out with the directory structure '
Originally Moose could only populate its library by scanning folders, so here the option remains, a relic of the past.
MySQL DB
This is the current Slimserver database engine, as used by 6.5 and greater. If you're using 6.3, you need to use SQLite scanning instead (which may be buggy as it's not being maintained any more).
To get MySQL scanning working with Moose, you need to do 2 things:
Unbinding
By default Slimserver limits, or binds database access to the local machine. This is fine if Moose is running on the same machine as the server, but this is rarely the case, so you'll probably need to unbind the database.
For SqueezeCenter 7 builds after around the 10th December 2007, Moose (0.62 or greater) will be able to automatically unbind the database for you. All that is required is a reboot of the server when you see a popup from Moose explaining that it has just un-bound the database. There is a checkbox which turns this behaviour off and re-binds the database to the server machine.
For SqueezeCenter 7 builds before the 10th December 2007 and all versions of SlimServer, you'll unfortunately need to unbind the database manually:
You need to load the my.tt file into a text editor and remove the line 'bind-address = 127.0.0.1'
On Windows this file lives down 'C:\Program Files\SlimServer\server\MySQL\my.tt' by default, and on Linux (rpm) it lives down '/usr/local/slimserver/MySQL/my.tt' by default.
Reboot (or kill/stop the mysqld.exe process/service and restart slimserver) for the change to take effect.
Settings
Next you need to tell Moose how to talk to the database. The default values should be fine. To be safe though, make sure the radio icon next to MySQL DB is selected and enter your MySQL database name, port, username and password into the fields to the right.
By default the db and usr names are both slimserver, the port is 9092, and the password is an empty string.
If you have problems connecting under the slimserver username, try using root instead.
If you now click the big Rescan/Update button, hopefully Moose will scan the MySql database and populate the moo file.
The three options below the scan button should generally be ticked.
Update thumbnail cache after a rescan - If this is ticked, during the rescan process Moose will run through all the albums in your collection and request album art for each album that has it, but for which there is no cached thumbnail. If Amazon functionality is also enabled, Moose will query amazon for a few random missing covers as well. It only does a few to comply with Amazon's cover-leeching rules. Whilst doing all this it also works out the average colour for each cover. These average colours are used in Moose for placeholders and colour sorting functionality, particularly in the Cover Chooser window. Having this option ticked can mean a rescan takes a little longer, particularly the first time it is run. An alternative to checking this option is to click the 'Update Thumbnail Cache Now' button in the Library Tab.
Fast Scan - There are now two scanning modes. Fast scan is quicker, but places more demand on the server. If scanning fails for any reason, it's worth disabling fast scan and trying a 'slow scan'.
Out Of Date Warnings - If this is ticked, when you open the library window, Moose will check if the timestamp on its local scanned data matches the timestamp on the server database. If the server is more recent it will suggest a rescan to keep things up to date.
SQLite
This is the older Slimserver database engine. If you're on version 6.3 of slimserver or earlier, this is the scanning method for you.
Note that to use the SQLite functions you must have downloaded the x86 dll package from http://adodotnetsqlite.sourceforge.net/downloads/ and copied SQLite.NET.dll and SQLite3.dll into the same folder as Moose.exe (or put them both on your path somewhere).
The SQLite field should be set to contain the path of your slimserver db file. (NB: To solve potential server crashes, it's wise to use a copy of the .db file rather than the live db file - if the 'Copy Locally Before Scanning' option is ticked, Moose will attempt to do this automatically). When the path is set, hit the Rescan button. A progress bar window should hopefully be displayed.
Cache Folder - Set this to a folder in which to cache thumbnails for the albums list in the library. Set it to empty to stop coverart being displayed.
Album Height - This is the height of each item in the albums list in the library window. The default is 48 pixels, but any value between about 8 and 200 could be used.
Update thumbnail cache now - If you want to manually refresh your thumbnail cache, this is the button for you. Average colour values will also be computed whilst the caching is going on. If you have the 'update thumbnail cache after a rescan' option turned on in the scanning tab, you shouldnt need to do this.
Colour sort mode - When sorting albums by the colour of their artwork, this specifies how to sort them.
Simplify genre text - When displaying a genre, if this is ticked Moose will run the string through a set of standard genres and attempt to work out which matches it best.
Initial Focus - This sets the control to be given focus when the library window is first opened. Handy for touch-screen devices.
Enter Key - This is the functionality that happens when you type in a search and hit
Enable Undo for Current Playlist Edits - This will allow any accidental changes to the current playlist to be reversed. Suppose you double-clicked an album by mistake in a library window and it started playing. Selecting Playlist->Undo from the menus or using the standard windows shortcut CTRL+Z would go back to what you had playing before.
Options relating to the main Now Playing window.
The controls at the top used to be the way of selecting between different players, but the players menu in the Now Playing window is now the preferred method for doing this.
The list control in this dialog also allows player selection, either by selecting and player and clicking 'control', or even just double-clicking a player. You can also use the list to sync and un-sync players.
Options relating to Moose startup and tray icon functionality, including the toast popup feature.
Options relating to the text display in the Now Playing window.
Location of the jukebox moo file. This feature is currently under development.
Logging - When the 'enable debug log file' option is checked, Moose will write debug logging information to a file called 'log.txt'. This can be handy when tracking down problems, particularly with the scanning functions.
Copy To - Moose has a 'copy' function which copies the selected artist's/album's files to the folder specified here when you select and click 'copy' in the main dialog. This can be quite handy if you have a portable mp3 player, or just wish to back things up.
Tagger App - Keeping the ID tags on a music collection up-to-date is quite a task, and often the odd album slips through the net. Moose has the facility to launch an external tagging application (via the Tagger button on the main window). Paste in the complete path to your favourite tagging application's exe file here. When you click the Tagger button, this app will be launched with the path to the currently playing song, or root if nothing is playing, as a parameter. Everyone recommends different tagging applications, but I swear by Tag&Rename, and this feature works flawlessly with it.
NB: The Tagger and Copy To features only work with folder scanning at the moment.
SqueezeSlave - Squeezeslave is a headless and less CPU intense version of Softsqueeze. If you've downloaded Squeezeslave, put the full path to Squeezeslave.exe in this control. After doing so, clicking 'squeezeslave' in the now playing players menu will start squeezeslave running (and hence provide music playback on the machine running moose).
Amazon - Choose your favourite amazon website. Moose uses Amazon for the similar albums feature, coverart downloading and links to the currently playing album.
Click the Library button in the main window. The library dialog (similar to that pictured below) should appear.
The Library window used to be the main focus of Moose, and it still contains the main menu and status text.
If the library contains no tracks, check your settings in the Options dialog.
After setting things up and doing the relevant 'Rescan', the Library should be usable.
Initially both the artists and albums lists will contain all the artists and albums in your collection.
If you click on an artist, the albums list will now just display albums by that artist, and the files list will show all the files for that artist.
If you click an album, the artists list will show all the artists in your collection, but select the relevant artist for the selected album, and the files list will just show files for that album.
You can use the standard
The tabs above the artists and albums lists allow sorting by various modes. Click the tab again to reverse the sort order.
The edit-control at the top left allows filtering and searching based on your whole collection. It filters as you type, so there is no need to press <Enter>. In fact, if you do press <Enter> it will do the same as clicking the play button. The search algorithm is case insensitive, and it uses substrings, so if you typed 'lo' with the displayed groups, you'd get 'Eno Sockdraw Explosion' and 'Heavy Lobster', as they both contain the string 'lo'.
The Show All button shows all your songs, albums and artists. If you click it with
The Current button selects the currently playing album.
The Rnd button fills the file list with all the files in your collection and selects a random file.
The Insert button adds the currently selected item just after the playing item in the current playlist.
The Add button adds the currently selected item to the end of the currently playing playlist.
The Play button clears the current playlist and plays the currently selected item.
At the bottom of the dialog there is a 'status line' which shows information about what Slimserver is currently playing. Clicking here when playing should highlight the playing track in the list boxes. This status line can also provide useful feedback if there was a problem connecting to the server.
The album list contains thumbnails of the albums listed. Moose gets these from slimserver and caches 100x100 thumbnails of them in the folder specified in the 'thumbnails:' control in the preferences dialog. If you dont want to see thumbnails, or if there are problems, set the option to an empty path.
You can change the height of the albums in the albums list. The default is 48 pixels, but any value between about 8 and 200 could be used. Actually, when the height is above 100 pixels, Moose caches and uses the original cover-art image, rather than the resized one, so it may be a bit slower.
The 'Now Playing' dialog displays information on the currently playing track and playlist, and provides some simple control over the player.
It should be fairly obvious what's what here, but there are a couple of features hidden by mouse-clicks:
At the bottom right of the window are some basic control buttons. These mirror the remote's functionality.
The cat amongst the pigeons here is the blank button. This is the 'popcorn' button. Pressing this invokes a 'popcorn' entry in your server's ir/default.map (or ir/custom.map) if you have set one up.
For example, if you added the line:
popcorn = modefunction_PLUGIN.RandomPlay::Plugin->tracks
to the common section of ir/default.map and restart your server, clicking the popcorn button would invoke RandomMix->Songs
At the top of the window, there is a menu-bar.
The Player menu allows you to select a player.
The Player->Start SoftSqueeze menu item will launch a new version of SoftSqueeze on your local PC.
The Player->Exit option closes Moose.
The Tools->Open Library menu item opens the song selection / searching window.
The Tools->Open Library Tree menu item opens the Library Tree.
The Tools->Open Cover Chooser menu item opens the Cover Chooser.
The Tools->Open Biography menu item opens the Biography window. This relies on a server plugin.
The Tools->Open Album Review menu item opens the Album Review window. This relies on a server plugin.
The Tools->Launch Tagger menu item opens an external tagging application and passes the currently playing album to it. (see the options section)
The Tools->Open Folder menu item opens an exporer window containing the currently playing song.
The Tools->Amazon Lookup menu item attempts to find the album you're currently playing on the Amazon website. Handy for reviews and recommendations.
The Tools->Yahoo Lookup menu item attempts to find the album you're currently playing on the Yahoo website. Handy for reviews and recommendations.
The Tools->MSN Lookup menu item attempts to find the album you're currently playing on the MSN website. Handy for reviews and recommendations.
The Tools->Export Library... menu item allows you to export your current collection in various formats.
The Tools->Open SlimServer Browser menu item opens a web-browser pointing to the slimserver home-page for the current player.
The Tools->Preferences... menu item opens the preferences window.
The list in the bottom half of the dialog displays the currently playing playlist.
Double-clicking any track in the playlist will cause the player to start playing that track.
The playlists menu provides extra playlist functionality.
Normally the playlist should remain in sync with the server, but if for any reason it becomes out of sync, click the Playlists->Refresh menu item and it'll be re-requested from the server.
Selecting a track in the playlist and clicking the Playlists->Remove Selected Item menu item will remove that track from the playlist.
The Playlists->Remove All Items menu item will remove all the tracks from the playlist.
The Playlists->Load and Playlists->Save menu items will load and save the current playlist. A dialog will pop up with all the playlists that slimserver knew about when you last did a 'Rescan'. When saving, you can create new playlist files by entering a name in the edit control.
The playlist feature is currently a bit work-in-progress, so dont expect miracles. If it's flickering away like mad updating, it's best to wait until it's finished before using it.
"Tools->Open Cover Chooser" brings up Moose's album art chooser dialog. There are various filtering and display options.
Double-clicking a cover makes it play. CTRL+Double-clicking adds the cover to the current playlist.
To get the best out of the cover chooser scanning via MySQL and caching thumbnails after scanning is recommended.
"Tools->Open Tree" brings up Moose's library tree dialog.
This dialog allows you to select internet radio stations, dynamic playlists and albums from your main library.
Expand the branches and use the context menu to play, add or insert your choice.
Besides the context menu, you can also double-click items to play or open them.
As with the cover chooser, this is still very much a work in progress item.
One thing to note is the different root nodes:
Moose supports windows UNC network shares '\\servermachine\mp3s', so no matter what platform your server is running on, you should be able to access it via Moose.
Also, if your collection uses windows shortcuts (.lnk files), there is a feature which allows Moose's folder rescan to resolve the .lnk to a different location (as the normally resolved location wouldn't work over a network share).
In brief:
a.lnk:\\server\mp3s1\a
b.lnk:\\server\mp3s1\b
z.lnk:\\server\mp3s2\c
various.lnk:\\server\moremp3s\various
Comments, hello's and suggestions welcome: drlovegrove@gmail.com
Moose is completely free, but donations (paypal), gifts (Amazon wishlist) or new Squeezeboxes are always welcome.